Put shadow topics of the most commonly resuggested Rejected Suggestions in the main Suggestions Forum

Specifics/Details:

When persons new to this forum arrive with their ideas, they often do not realize that those ideas are not new, and many of them do not bother to search for existing suggestions. It's only human nature to presume that one's idea is both novel and valuable.

To help people see what they need to see, I suggest that some or all of the stickied Rejected Suggestions be shadowed and stickied in the main Suggestions Forum. That way, they are more likely to be seen and extended, rather than having a new topic added that the Suggestions moderators will simply merge to the Rejected Suggestion.

A special topic icon marking these shadows as Rejected would be a good idea, and easy to add, but the topic title might also be changed to reflect this.

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:

Persons suggesting something already rejected are more likely to see, read, and perhaps understand the topic which has already explored the idea.

Suggestions moderators would spend less time answering and merging duplicate topics.

Well, I would leave it to the Suggestions moderators to determine which ones appear, but I would shadow each one individually. I would not suggest a topic which summarizes the rejected ones, as this would be more work and would not put the details right in front of the users who need to see them.

IMO, if the user isn't willing to put in enough effort to read a bit in the suggestions forum, the user isn't serious about their suggestion. I don't like this suggestion, because it just clutters up the main suggestions forum (even if we start with 5, eventually we'll end up with 20+).

blakebowling wrote:IMO, if the user isn't willing to put in enough effort to read a bit in the suggestions forum, the user isn't serious about their suggestion. I don't like this suggestion, because it just clutters up the main suggestions forum (even if we start with 5, eventually we'll end up with 20+).

Perhaps a compromise is to put a text banner for the main forum telling people to look at the commonly rejected suggestions before creating a new thread.

blakebowling wrote:IMO, if the user isn't willing to put in enough effort to read a bit in the suggestions forum, the user isn't serious about their suggestion. I don't like this suggestion, because it just clutters up the main suggestions forum (even if we start with 5, eventually we'll end up with 20+).

I, too, wish people would read more and spam less, but I have doubts that it will happen soon. Sadly, too many can't be bothered to even open the Rejected forum.Also, I agree that this must be limited to just a couple of rejects: the Surrender feature comes to mind. I hope the Suggs mods would use their good judgement here.

Metsfanmax wrote:Perhaps a compromise is to put a text banner for the main forum telling people to look at the commonly rejected suggestions before creating a new thread.

This might work, but putting an existing topic that can be added to right in front of the noses of these people might get them to post, right off the bat, where their post will ultimately end up.

chapcrap wrote:Instead of shadowing multiple (5-8) threads. Would a list of the most popular rejections be sufficient?

I like this idea of a list; I like it much better than yet another banner headline.

The list would combine two purposes if each item listed displayed a link to the rejected thread itself - because then without having to weed through all the items in the rejected thread, the person reading the list seeing an idea similar to his could then hit the link and go right to all the previous discussion of the "new suggestion" he'd otherwise have made - and identify if his seems unique enough, after all, to try again.

The other benefit of list-with-links is, any topic that falls under a couple descriptions could be listed under the variations you might have found them - nothing specific comes to mind, just throwing that out there because people do use different wording for their ideas sometimes.

But a list inside a topic is no more accessible than the stickied topics in the Rejected Suggestions forum itself. If people do not open that forum and check what's there, why would they open a topic to find the list?

Okay, I make it four votes, by choosing the third choice, my suggestion. This first option is the status quo, right? And the second option, in my opinion, will be extra effort for little to no gain, as I said before:

ender516 wrote:But a list inside a topic is no more accessible than the stickied topics in the Rejected Suggestions forum itself. If people do not open that forum and check what's there, why would they open a topic to find the list?

ender516 wrote:Okay, I make it four votes, by choosing the third choice, my suggestion. This first option is the status quo, right? And the second option, in my opinion, will be extra effort for little to no gain, as I said before:

ender516 wrote:But a list inside a topic is no more accessible than the stickied topics in the Rejected Suggestions forum itself. If people do not open that forum and check what's there, why would they open a topic to find the list?